


the world breaks around

by thebesttempinchiswick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Blade, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mark of Cain, Season 9 AU, posession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1432633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebesttempinchiswick/pseuds/thebesttempinchiswick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take me. Please, take me instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world breaks around

He's not sure how long he's out for.

When he wakes, however, Cas is on the floor to his right, and Sam stands in the door with Ruby's knife, poised to strike. To his left, Josie lays dead. He knows it's Josie because there's no way Abaddon wouldn't have killed them by now. "What happened?" Asks Sam. "I don't know." He answers.

Cas starts to wake, asking the same question. They stand around for a moment, light filtering in through the dirty windows in the warehouse. "So where did she go?" He asks. He doesn't like this, not at all. Something feels wrong in his bones. "Must've smoked out and left." Says Cas.

"But why?" Says Sam. "You don't even have the blade. I have it."

"Maybe she knew it was nearby?" It's weak, but it's all he's got.

>

They don't even make it halfway home.

Dean can see Sam's mind working as he drives. For the first ten minutes, he's rolling over the scene in his mind. For the next ten, he's mulling something over, and the next five he's coming up with a plan. He reaches forward and turns on the radio.

And changes the station to a pop song.

"Dude, what the fuck?" He asks, changing it back to his station.

"What, too Beyoncé for your Lady Gaga?"

He has no fucking idea what that means, but Cas does. Cas laughs, breaking into a grin that doesn't sit right on his features. Sam's eyes change, and Dean is left on the shore after a storm, wondering what happened.

It's night at the bunker when they arrive, and Dean feels something closing in.

>

It swallows his heart when Sam grabs his arm. "We need to talk. Now. Quietly." He takes a deep breath, but his lungs have shrunk to two useless, dead things, hanging off of his esophagus and weighing him down. "What is it?"

Sam's eyes are full of broken glass. "Cas doesn't know who Beyoncé or Lady Gaga are."

For a moment, his brain refuses to process. "Uh, okay? What does this mean for us?"

"No, you don't understand. He recognized them today. In the car."

No.

"Dean, that's not him."

"What are we gonna do?"

>

They don't wait for her to make the first move.

They march into Cas's room with shackles and blades, the First tucked safely away in Dean's jacket.

"What's going on?" Asks Cas. Abaddon. Abaddon, Dean reminds himself. Not Cas.

"You're not Cas. So you can drop the act." He says. He refuses to break for this woman, refuses to let her manipulate him. Even if she's using Cas as her vessel.

Her malicious grin unfurls over his face, his eyes blink black. It sends Dean's stomach into his throat. This is something from his nightmares.

"Alright, you got me. Not so much fun when we play pretend, is it? And I have to admit, my last suit was quite nice, but this one really takes the cake. You think so too, huh?" She smirks. "C'mon, what do you say we put those shackles to good use?"

"You're sick."

"Buzzkill." The smile drops. "I guess I'll just have to kill you then."

Sam is flung into the wall. Dean launches himself at her, and she pins him down. "Please, like you could kill me. I know Sammy has your little knife."

"Don't do this." He begs, getting himself off of the ground and gripping the blade. He carefully takes it out and readies himself.

"You honestly think that begging will get you anywhere?"

"I'm not talking to you, bitch." He takes a breath. "Cas, I know you can hear me. You can stop her, you can help me."

Her calm breaks for a second. She thinks he doesn't see, but he does.

They're circling each other, lions, waiting to strike.

He raises the knife, and she tilts Cas's neck. "If you're going to do that, then I'm afraid I'll have to make you pay."

>

If a person on a train and a person on the ground turn on two flashlights at the same time, which light travels faster?

He doesn't know the answer, but it's this bit of random trivia that his mind chooses to attach to in the seconds that he thrusts the blade into Abaddon's thigh. Twist. Thrust. He watches the light that is her mutilated soul flicker out of his angel's eyes. "Dean. Dean, you can stop now." Comes the gravelly voice, laced with pain.

Pain?

He has a knife in his thigh.

He has Dean's knife in his thigh.

The sensation is like swimming and swimming and finally coming up for air. The spell of the first blade is broken, at least for now. He pulls out the blade and pulls Cas into his arms.

Sam's hands are there, putting pressure on his leg.

"Dean" he hears a choked voice.

"I'm here, I'm here. You're gonna be fine, I'm here." He's not sure who he's comforting, himself or his angel.

"Thank you, Dean."

Thank you. The bastard is thanking him. After everything. After he's probably killed him for the last time, because this time he won't come back. "Won't let you go." He manages to whisper into his hair. He can't breathe. His lungs are filling with tar and he's letting them. This isn't the desperate, bloody drowning of being under the first blade's spell, no, this is absolution.

He doesn't feel it when Sam pulls them both into the car, he doesn't let go when they get to the hospital. When the orderlies pull his angel from his arms, his brain is so on overload that the loss barely registers. When Sam brings him a blanket, he looks at his brother's steady hands and realizes he is shaking. So much for composure, he thinks. "I did this, Sam, I did this."

"It wasn't your fault. You had to save him."

"But what if I didn't save him? What if he was gone from the start, and now I'm just the murder weapon? Me instead of Abaddon."

Sam doesn't have a good answer.

>

As the sun rises in the east, he falls asleep in his chair. The doctors had said that all that was left was to wait. Wait, he thinks, to see if the world will break him, break them, one more time.In an hour, Cas opens his eyes.

In a day, they go home.

In a lifetime, the sun rises in the east every day.

For once, the world breaks around them instead.  



End file.
